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The Ponzi Career

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Re: The Ponzi Career

#171

Post by forrestthewoods »

mattzito wrote: post #14

There’s literally nothing in this article that you couldn’t replace “token” or “coin” with “contract” or “membership” and have it work exactly the same. The idea of selling contracts against future income is interesting but putting the blockchain here is yet another solution in search of a problem.

You’re 100% correct. Which is also why I found the article thought provoking!

Blockchain isn’t magic. It can’t do very much “new”. But if it can take something old (contract) and make that more accessible to more potential contract buyers/sellers, then that’s actually interesting.

Technology that makes slow complicated things fast and easy can have a lot of impact.

I won’t be selling shares of myself nor buying shares of others. But this we’re close to the point where blockchain actually provides real value beyond tulip speculation.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#172

Post by jkhdigital »

LB232323 wrote: post #147
cassepipe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not really sure of what it is you call honor though. To me it is a word whose meaning I don't really understand whose main purpose seems to justify leaders in sending people to their death at war and by men to justify murdering women/other men. It is at best anachronic, at worst dangerous. (Of course I am not accusing you of promoting murder but that's a word that has a sad history and I hope we get rid of it in…

Honor just means doing the right thing, and it is also the respect you receive for doing so. The history of the word just means being a good person. Honor in terms of death and politics is often a manipulated distortion of what is right. Doing the right thing is often difficult, and this notion is used to manipulate people into killing each other. There is honor in not selling your dignity for money, or in doing the…

> Honor just means doing the right thing

You’re not wrong, but anyone can do “the right thing” when the incentives are aligned already. I’d say that honor requires one to do the right thing even when doing the wrong thing could be immensely profitable, and even when nobody would know.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#173

Post by jopsen »

Have people forgotten the classic way of investing in humans?

Social programs.

In Denmark part of my taxes goes to pay public pensions, and when I get old taxes will fund some pension for me.

The public pension isn't huge, so yes, almost everybody has a private pension scheme too.

My private pension is exposed to global stock performance over ~30 years.

My public pensions is exposed to value of humans in Denmark in ~30 years.

So in a way I do have exposure to some human investment :)

This is also why it makes sense for my taxes to fund tuition for everybody.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#174

Post by bradleyjg »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #55
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure you can do it all old school, but that takes a ton of effort and makes your situation a unique snowflake. Many of the situations required in this article still require real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto tokens are additive on top of the contracts, but they don't replace contracts. Someone could sell you an NFT that represents 15% of their future earnings over the next 3 years, but the blockchai…

I think this entire idea is insane, but that's not the argument. >Many of the situations required in this article still require real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto tokens are additive on top of the contracts, but they don't replace contracts. There is no duality of 'real-world contract'/'digital contracts'. The question is if a digital document and signatures are accepted by a judicial system. In 50 ye…

> The potential upside of 'tokenized' and standardized/automated legal documents are: less ambiguous interpretations, automatic resolution, simpler trading, and easier cross-border contracts ( to some extent ).

This all requires contracts as code capable of ascertaining external facts. As far as I know the only such facts that have been made to work are facts about the prices of other cryptocoins.

Furthermore, most of the benefits can already be obtained by registering a contract to be traded over a commodities exchange. There are, for example, weather futures being bought, sold, and adjudicated without any need or use for a blockchain.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#175

Post by freeone3000 »

LB232323 wrote: post #35
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #13

I enjoyed the piece. Personally, I want no part of it, but I think it might work well for people who are not me. I've always been "on my own." My life really is a series of watersheds, where I've been the only person to believe in me, before the event, and a whole bunch of folks seemed to believe in me, after the fact. Not a particularly good setup for selling "Chris-Tokens™." Not a bad thing, in the long run. It hur…

It's not a character flaw or lack of skills in not being able to "sell yourself". It's a sense of dignity and pride as a working person. You are not a commodity, you are a human being. You may look like a commodity to a business owner, but you refuse to allow yourself to become one. Honesty and honor are worth more than money. There is money to be made in making yourself into a sort of corporate dog, but it will leav…

Can you eat honor? Can you sell it? What is the worth of a man besides his ability to profit? Seeing endless people of honor scrape out meagre existences while those who exploit others endlessly become billionaires is more enlightening to the worth of honor than our useless platitudes.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#176

Post by giantg2 »

This basically happens already. The only way to get promoted is to make your boss look good. Basically pushing value up the pyramid, where people get paid more and "produce" intangible value (which of course is more prone to bias and promotion based on percieved contribution).

Re: The Ponzi Career

#177

Post by jkhdigital »

tjs8rj wrote: post #66
mattzito wrote: post #14

There’s literally nothing in this article that you couldn’t replace “token” or “coin” with “contract” or “membership” and have it work exactly the same. The idea of selling contracts against future income is interesting but putting the blockchain here is yet another solution in search of a problem.

I’m usually in total agreement about blockchain just being stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often. There’s definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it’s easy…

I think the setup in, for example, US equity markets makes it clear why blockchain is used for any kind of “securitization” of assets or contracts. You have a single company, DTCC, that physically owns all publicly traded stock certificates and so settlement of trades is just shuffling numbers in their ledger.

Blockchain is just a ready-made DTCC for whatever asset/contract you want to securitize.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#178

Post by saagarjha »

freeone3000 wrote: post #175
LB232323 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a character flaw or lack of skills in not being able to "sell yourself". It's a sense of dignity and pride as a working person. You are not a commodity, you are a human being. You may look like a commodity to a business owner, but you refuse to allow yourself to become one. Honesty and honor are worth more than money. There is money to be made in making yourself into a sort of corporate dog, but it will leav…

Can you eat honor? Can you sell it? What is the worth of a man besides his ability to profit? Seeing endless people of honor scrape out meagre existences while those who exploit others endlessly become billionaires is more enlightening to the worth of honor than our useless platitudes.

I think the issue here is that you’ve tied a monetary value to honor, when honor is often tied to other things and occasionally explicitly the lack of a desire to maximize profit.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#179

Post by jkhdigital »

idunno246 wrote: post #160
tjs8rj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m usually in total agreement about blockchain just being stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often. There’s definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it’s easy…

does blockchain solve the trust problem here though? my trust issue would be that the person doesnt report their entire income, or purposely delays deals past the term, which is all out of band of the coin

The only trust problem that blockchain solves is that of transaction settlement. Anything else requires a hybrid solution with a trusted third party.

Re: The Ponzi Career

#180

Post by freeone3000 »

saagarjha wrote: post #178
freeone3000 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you eat honor? Can you sell it? What is the worth of a man besides his ability to profit? Seeing endless people of honor scrape out meagre existences while those who exploit others endlessly become billionaires is more enlightening to the worth of honor than our useless platitudes.

I think the issue here is that you’ve tied a monetary value to honor, when honor is often tied to other things and occasionally explicitly the lack of a desire to maximize profit.

It's not monetarily valued. It's not societally valued, in any tangible sense. Power is not allocated to whomever has the most honor. So what good is it?
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